Saving Princess Thumbtack
by TariGondoro
Summary: --finished-- An unexpected time for Agent Smith to appear in your bedroom...
1. The Vorpal Blade is Drawn

Disclaimer: Although I'm not sure if I'm ever going to name the agent, he is indeed a creation of the Brothers Wachowski, as are his mannerisms.  The unnamed character is mine, and the patent is pending.  Thanks to Lewis Carroll for the title references.  They are from "Jabberwocky."

Rating: PG for the use of the word "bra."  

The Vorpal Blade is Drawn

I was having really weird dreams that night.  I was floating among all of these lavender and taupe clouds and then there was this giant Lollipop who called himself the Frubjous Man, and I reached out to take his hand and suddenly we were deep in the forest, and I had to save the Princess Thumbtack from the evil men, but there were all these benches in the middle of these clearings and the evil thumbtacks were hiding under the leaves and kept jumping out at us.  Then the forest caught on fire, and everything was burning, and all the trees and the leaves were on fire, and the light from the fire was so bright, so bright, and I opened my eyes.

            My bedroom light was on.  It seemed only vaguely odd through the thick haze that clouded my thought at that hour that there was a man standing in my bedroom doorway.  Leaning against it, in fact, with arms folded and one shin crossed over the other.  Seemingly jaunty and completely at ease, with muscles taut as a bowstring, ready to spring.  

            This did not seem a curious thing to me, though, so I sat up, hugged my knees to my chest, and asked rather foolishly, "Who _are_ you?" 

            It was a stupid thing to say, really, because he was in uniform – or, at least, what passed as uniform these days.  The precise black suit, the square sunglasses still on at – what was it, 3:30 in the morning? – and that obnoxiously shiny tie clip. 

            He took a step into my room.  The only thing I could think about was how many bras I'd left laying around my floor.  

            "We got a call, about half an hour ago."  The thought inexplicably flashed through my head and I wondered if he was breaking and entering, and maybe I should call the police.  Then I slapped myself.  He _was_ the police! "It seems that a man who calls himself H. Walker has a connection with someone at this address.  As you well know, this Walker fellow has been indicted with many counts of larceny and theft, but he has hitherto not been charged.  We were called in to investigate this connection.  Now, is there anything you want to tell me?"  

            Jesus Christ, my brain does not work at that hour.  It feels like a horse-drawn snowplow through wet cement, and works about as well.  Strange theories that involved my mother's ex-boyfriend's nephew's chauffeur's half-cousin's accountant who I met at a wedding came into mind, but somehow I didn't think it would be very plausible.  

            He stood there, waiting.  His long, tall figure was framed in the doorway, arms still crossed.  I traced the line of his suit down to the floor.  

What was that poking out from under his foot?  Hey, he was standing on my favorite bra!

On complete impulse, with no help from my entirely inactive brain, I jumped out of bed and gave the agent a shove to get at the crushed item.  In one fluid movement, he grabbed my hand, spun me around, drew his Desert Eagle out and pointed it at my temple. Like I said.  Snowplow through cement.

Suddenly and without warning, my brain started to kick in.  'I only heard of Walker at my friend's party!' 'I swear, I didn't know that he was going to use my information to hack into the government database!' 'Yes, I told him some confidential details, but I had no idea that he was Walker until later!' 'I don't know where he is, and even if I did I wouldn't tell you, scumbag!' 'Go ahead and shoot me. I would rather die than betray him!' were all things that went through my head.  "You're standing on my bra" was what came out of my mouth.

I could hear him raise an eyebrow.  

The next thing I heard when I opened my eyes was his feet scraping slowly across my bedroom floor.  Something was very different here.  For one, the sun was shining straight into my room when just a minute ago it had been 4 o'clock in the morning.  Secondly, there seemed to be something wrong with my head, because it felt like it had been replaced by a watermelon in the middle of a Gallagher show.  I reached up to feel it and confirm this suspicion when I realized that my hands were tied behind my back with rope that felt like it was made of rusty saw blades.  Hmm…quite a predicament.  I congratulated myself on not being dead.


	2. The Jaws that Bite

Disclaimer: I do not take credit for the agent. The titles are credited to Lewis Carroll.

Rating: PG for mentioning the bodily fluid "blood." Don't be scared.

Author's note: If you as a person cannot cope with sentence fragments, I suggest you skip this chapter.  There are two of the in it. :-)  And, as always, thank you for reading.

*The Jaws that bite, the Claws that catch!*

I took stock of the situation.  Then I stopped taking stock because it was too depressing.  I consoled myself with the following fact:  I was in a fix that was hardly worse than having to fight off a rabid giraffe with only a spoon; the only difference was that I had never had to fight off a giraffe before, and I didn't have a spoon.  

Finally the Agent stopped his audible wandering and crouched down in front of my face, well within my personal bubble.  

"I will only ask you one more time.  Where is this Walker? Where does he live? Tell me everything you know about him, or I will create for you the worst hell that you've ever imagined in the darkest, loneliest hours of the night.  Tell me."

I recoiled from him at the thought of being drowned under several tons of Teletubby carcasses, and felt my resolve dissolving.  

"I'm not sure…he was, well, I don't really know…He never really, I mean…I kind of but then…" 

Somehow, he cut right through all my inarticulate blathering and surmised this: "So you're telling me that you met with him through a mutual friend and passed along vital information without your full knowledge of the consequences? And this happened, what, about a week ago?" 

"Um…"

"And then he tried to contact you with further inquiries but you have not as of yet indulged his appeal?"

"Er…"

The agent tipped his head to the side as if he was craning to hear something better.  I wondered what he was doing until it finally clunked into place. Abruptly he straightened up, swung around, and left the room without another word.

Three hours later I was only a pint of blood closer to untying myself from the chair, and my stomach was so vocal it felt like I had the Sunday Choir in my belly.  

It seems like, in all the mystery and action books, when a character is in a real pickle, they always procure something brilliant for their escape.  They always get these inspired ideas at just the right time, like fashioning a key out of their own tooth.  So why was it that when I tried to bully my brain into working, all I could think about was how exceedingly graceful the agent was? Or the thought of him picking me up when I was unconscious and tying me to the chair.  With every effort to dam the flow of these ideas, more just kept on flooding my synapses. This wasn't healthy! 

Note to self: If you ever get out of this mess alive, find a psychiatrist *fast*! Because you have some serious problems inside your head.


	3. Did Gyre and Gimble in the Wabe

Disclaimer: Same as the first.

Rating: PG – quite tame.  Mention blood.

Author's note: I've finished the story.  There's no nooky.  Sorry.  But there is a nice heart-eating bit…oh, wait, different story :-)  

"Did gyre and gimble in the wabe" 

    *If this isn't wabe, I don't know what is.

As I sat there pondering the insanity of my own brain, a brilliant plan of escape came to mind.  I would just sit here until somebody found me, patiently, calmly, without any hint of panic.  Someone was bound to walk in, right?  I mean, just because I lived alone, and had very few close friends, and didn't know any of the neighbors, had no significant other, not to mention I heard the lock click behind the agent, that didn't mean that someone wouldn't accidentally pick my lock and fall inside and find me, right? I mean, the chances of that weren't too slim, they were at least a good million to one! Someone would find me, they would! They would! Oh, god, help me! Help! HELP!

Fortunately, at this point, I decided to lose my mind completely, and I started shrieking.  When that didn't prove fruitful, I started hopping up and down in my chair, madly trying to wriggle out of the knots that I swear were superglued together.  

So much for always keeping a level head in a dire situation!  

As I was vigorously banging the chair around and screeching like a banshee, I forgot the location one important thing: my center of gravity.  And down I fell, onto the cold, hard, wooden floors, my arms still tied behind my back.  I really wouldn't have noticed through my own panic, except for it still smelled exceptionally like hardwood stain. Yum.

And that was the time at which the agent decided to reappear in my bedroom as if cued.  He looked down at me, lying on the floor, still tied to the chair, arms behind my back, blood all around me, with one leg through a rung of the chair.  I couldn't move more than a sporadic wriggle, like a decapitated mutant worm tied to a chair, but I tried. He lost it then.  He threw back his head, collapsed to my bedroom floor, and laughed until tears streamed down his face.

I was not laughing with him.

I admit I was smiling, for I could see that I looked like a complete idiot, but one must remember that it was me who was looking like the abstract garbage sculpture, not him.  And that made it much more difficult to laugh at.


	4. Manxome Schizophrenia

Disclaimer: See previous chapter.

Rating: PG. I trust kids have already heard the phrase "God damn it." (mother mary, father of Christ, etc. etc.)

Manxome Schizophrenia

Hours later, he finally composed himself enough to untie me.  I could still hear him chuckling behind me.  As his nimble fingers undid the impossible knots, I felt his hands brush every now and then.  Images and thoughts rushed through my head, unbidden, unwanted, unstoppable.  I dug my fingernails into the flesh of my palms, thinking this would somehow help.  I rationalized to myself: he must be at least twice as old as I am.  He is a member of the law enforcement community, and we all know what bloodthirsty killers they are! 

Bloodthirsty, yes, but also cute, cuddly, and graceful! 

Innocent people have been shot by the gun that is inches away from you!

Well, yeah, but a man's got to do something to make a living.

The murderous fiend probably enjoys it!  
            I doubt that – nobody actually *likes* their job!  By working in this profession, he is more likely to dislike killing than someone not in law enforcement. Think about it logically.

If you want to use logic, honey, you're going to be flattened.  His age. His available selection.  And have you checked for a wedding band, Ms. Common Sense?

And when would you propose that I do that? When he was pointing the gun at my temple or when I was wallowing in a pool of my own blood and vomit?

Shut up, shut UP! A third voice piped in. Will you two stop bickering long enough to get us out of here alive? God damn it! It's like kindergarten in here with you two whiners!

Slowly, painfully, and laboriously we came up with a plan.

It was only to stall for time; I still didn't know how much Walker meant to me.  If the choice to betray him or give my own life up arose, I didn't know what I would do.  I broke the silence.  "I will tell you what you need to know about Walker." He didn't even start at my pronouncement.  "But I've been tied to this chair all morning. I really need to get some coffee, and maybe we can have a walk around the park after."

Mmm…a walk in the park with a sharply-dressed agent…mmm…SMACK! from Number Two, SLAP! from Number One.  Number Three tied them both to the brain stem. 

So I found myselves meandering through the partitioned flowerbeds, chatting unconcernedly with the agent.  Inside my head, though, was a battlefield.  Bullets of reason shot this way, spears of logic were lobbed that way, and all the time more and more soldiers kept popping up out of nowhere to join in the fray.  There must have been two or three thousand me's at one point.  I never knew anyone could be this schizophrenic!

In the end, the victors stood upon the bodies of the slain, and rang out their declaration through the caverns of my mind: "We will not give up our honor and betray those nearest us!  We will never back down, though Hell itself comes to claim us!"


	5. The Passing of the Jabberwocky

Disclaimer: Thanks again to the Wachowski Bros and especially to Lewis Carroll for the titles. If you've never read Jabberwocky, I highly recommend it.  Also thanks to JRR Tolkien for the penultimate two words.

Rating: PG-13 for kicks and giggles.

Author's note: The titles are not jibberish, by the way.  If you care about such things.

The Passing of the Jabberwocky

There were at least ten minutes between the moment when he pulled the trigger and the time when I felt it enter my chest.  

It's a test.  A game.  He never pulled the trigger.  He couldn't have.  He wasn't like the other agents; he didn't kill for pleasure.  He had gotten to know me; I had stalled for time and bared my soul to him.  I had told him about how my grandmother would beat me with her spindly walking stick any time my parents weren't looking.  I told him about my lifelong hobby of eating dirt.  My favorite was the dirt around pine trees – a dark, woody bouquet.

But he was sharp, this one.  Somewhere through all of my childhood stories about dead goldfish, he had discerned that I meant not to tell him the truth about Walker. That I would rather die than tell him.  

I saw him blink at this realization and slowly turn his head towards me.  But I knew that he wouldn't.  He couldn't.  I loved him.  I loved the way his hand rested on his Desert Eagle.  I loved the way he strolled through the park, at any time ready to protect me against ten thousand Martian warriors, and die in the attempt.  My first assessment of the agent had been completely wrong.  Through him listening to me for at least a good ten minutes, I had realized my misjudgment.  He wasn't a killing machine; he was just a regular guy stuck in the wrong job.  

Not that he had told me any of this; I had just surmised it.

This explains why I was so surprised to find myself in an anonymous alleyway with a Desert Eagle once again pointed at me.  This time it was my heart. 

I truly did not believe that he would pull the trigger.  I knew, in my heart, in my soul, that he would not be able to kill me.  He would never be able to destroy this beauty that he had only just discovered.  It would have been physically impossible.  

I could see his eyes through his square sunglasses.  I could see into them, into his soul.  I suddenly understood that he loved me.  

Realization hit me as sloppily as a snow blower to the face.  He was just playing a game! He really meant to propose to me!  We were getting married and would have nineteen children!

I watched his finger on the trigger of the gun.  It twitched, undecided.  I was beyond certain that no harm was going to come to me.  

He loved me.  

I watched the bullet leave the barrel of his gun and travel over to me.

It must have been made of foam. 

I watched it enter my flesh.

This was just a dream.

A dream.

dream

dream

I had to wake up.

And then I did. It felt like I was being painfully ripped through several plates of glass.  It felt like running through hail made of bowling balls.  It felt like every part of my flesh was being torn in a different direction.  I sat up screaming.  It was all pink around me.  Machines, wires, and pain.  Falling, sliding, down, into a chasm, down, down. Splash! Cold, slimy, wet.  Now up, up again, in the cradling arms of a cold, steel, machine.  It was colder here than it had been in New York.  Where was I? And there were people looking at me.  And I was naked.

How odd, I thought.  Then I passed out.

i metta 

(the end)


End file.
